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Cirque du Soleil goes from big top to big screen

'Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away 3D' opens Friday at Hollywood 14

Two young people, The Arialist (Igor Zaripov), left, and Mia (Erica Kathleen Linz), journey through the astonishing and dreamlike worlds of Cirque Du Soleil to find each other in the 3-D movie "Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away," which opens Friday at the Hollywood 14 theaters, 6200 S.W. 6th.

Fans of Cirque du Soleil, including new ones won over to its avant-garde approach to circus at one of its seven performances of “Dralion” at the Kansas Expocentre, can enter that magical world again in their hometown theater.

“Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away 3D” opens at noon Friday at the Hollywood 14 theaters, 6200 S.W. 6th, where it and a 2-D version are on the schedule through at least Jan. 3.

Produced by Oscar winner James Cameron (“Avatar,” "Titanic”), “Worlds Away” captures those acts leaping, soaring, swimming and dancing with immersive 3-D technology as it follows Cirque du Soleil aerialists Igor Zaripov as The Aerialist and former artist Erica Kathleen Linz as Mia who meet at the top of the movie at a real-world circus.

“She’s a young girl looking to escape her life,” Adamson said in the movie’s press kit. “She sees this aerialist and instantly falls in love with him, but when their eyes meet he slips and falls. He drops through the circus ring into another world and drags her with him.”

They spend the rest of the film searching for one another in what Adamson called the “dreamlike” world of Cirque du Soleil.

“Ultimately they come together in a dream-fulfilling aerial ballet, an act that hangs in the balance between beauty and danger,” the filmmaker concluded.

Like the live shows, the film eschews dialogue and uses music and the expressions of the performers to advance the narrative. However, Adamson said it was never the filmmakers’ intention to simply capture the live shows.

“What I wanted to do,” he said, “is take the audience to see these shows in a way that they hadn’t seen them before, to get the camera in close and give a different perspective of what these artists can do and show that perspective in high-speed, slow-motion 3-D.”

Show times for “Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away” can be found on the Hollywood Theaters website at www.gohollywood.com, where advance tickets can be purchased online.

Those who prefers seeing Cirque du Soleil live or want to seen a live show in addition to the 3-D movie will have two opportunities as the tour of the show “Quidam” is slated to stop Dec. 26-30 at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Mo., and Jan. 2-6 at the Intrust Bank Arena in Wichita.

The “Quidam” live orchestra includes Topeka West High School alumna Alicia Enstrom on violin. Look for a feature story about Enstrom to be posted on CJOnline.com and published in The Topeka Capital-Journal before opening night at the Sprint Center.